Over the past few weeks I have been working hard in Victoria facilitating the Aboriginal engagement strategy for the Victoria Urban Development Agreement.The work unfolded in two stages, with the first stage being three focus groups on economic, physical and social issues. We used the ICA Focused Conversations methodology to deepen and inquire into the participants experience of their community. Objective data was recorded as mind maps which we then overlay with data harvested from the reflective, interpretive and decisional parts of the conversations.
Following the focus groups, we conducted a large 1.5 day community meeting to gather issues and challenges from the community itself. The first day was an Open Space meeting which brought 60 people together including a number of homeless and virtually homeless folks. This was followed on day two with a World Cafe which we called an “Action Cafe” aimed at discovering strategies for keeping this process alive within the larger development agreement process. We knew we had the right people in the room when at lunch an announcement was made that “a shopping cart was illegally parked!”
Following the conclusion of the cafe, we had fiddling and dancing from some Metis performers and Coast Salish and Kwagiulth drum songs from Victoria’s Unity Drummers.
It has been a rich experience working on this project. For more information, see what one of the community groups, the Inner City Aboriginal Society, wrote about our work. And for more photos, visit the Flickr page for “A Community at Work.”
I have no idea about these tunes, but I suspect they are Armenian or Georgian choral pieces.
At any rate, have a listen to this one, and if you speak Russian (Raffi?) let me know what it is I have stumbled upon.
UPDATE: In the comments, my Friend Raffi Aftandelian writes from Moscow:
I think this is Georgian. The music is from an Abkhaz site. The Abkhazians are another Caucasian ethnic group. Abkhazia used to be part of Georgia, now it’s in the neverneverland of not being part of Georgia and yet not quite recognized as a separate country.
Thanks Raffi.
Victoria, BC
My two favourite processes of the moment, and there are people all over the place looking at ways to combine them.
Today, Christine Whitney Sanchez sends the report from her latest effort, which used OST and World Cafe to work with up to 2000 people at the National Girls Scouts Convention in the USA. The proceedings are online.
Tomorrow I am about to do the same thing, beginning a two day conversation with the Aboriginal community of Victoria. Christine’s efforts are my inspiration tonight.
I was hanging out with my mates and fellows from the Art of Hosting yesterday here on Bowen Island. Any time I get to spend with these guys changes the way I see things.
Yesterday Toke Moeller was describing a game he has developed called Flowgame, which is a way of asking questions and hosting conversations to sustain flow on these questions. In passing he mentioned that in order to play, you have to have a real question, and he described a real question as a question where you have something at stake.
That’s a wicked definition if you think about it. It gets away from questions that are just academic, or that are leading questions, or closed questions and it invites questions which, by their very asking, change everything.
THAT is the practice of invitation.
After a couple of conversations around the practice workshop I am offering in two weeks, and a lot of midnight interruption on his part Michael Herman has distilled the thinking again on the practices of Open Space.:
1. Being Open-Hearted – not just the act of opening, but the practice of being that way, resting in that state. The tool here is experience, our own life experience. The workshop conversation is about the life experiences that have opened our hearts, in gentle or devastating ways – and how we’ve managed to maintain various states of openness, in spite of everything. The product here is Body.2. Telling Visionary Stories – not just any storytelling, but the practice of speaking of our visions, of putting words and giving voice to the scattered data, fuzzy patterns, and blurry sensations we have of what we want and what might now be possible. The tools here are maps and languages. Every department, team, family and function has its own set of words and pictures to hold them together. The more languages we know, the bigger and broader the story we can spin, the more people we can invite. The workshop conversation here is about Inviting Organization, a map and language for maps and languages. The product is Invitation, Organization in the sense of Order.
3. Offering (and Holding) Space – the offering is important, no push, no grab, just letting what we have, our attention and our space, be there for the taking, for the use and support of what wants to happen in front of us, and all around us, within the circle of space that we circle and name as “us” and “our time together.” The tool(s) here are structures, but specifically those structures that support movement, rather than restrict it. Rules, if you will, that say what we can do, rather than what we must or must not do. Shapes of organization that create, and offer, choices. The workshop conversation is about space and support for movement. The product is Organization, Invitation in the sense of Space for Movement.
4. Grounding� making it real. making it touch, as impact, and imprint, a difference. and making touchdowns. score! making tracks, traction, and action. taking the steps, in the space, aligned with the vision, as guided by an open heart. showing up. on the ground. The tools are actions, steps, or perhaps gifts. The workshop conversation might be about gifts and giving. Assets and Exchange. Self and Others. Ground. Ground that is bigger, less theoretical, more sensational than Common Ground. More like Ground of Being. Which brings us back to the first practice, and how we are being “Aaaahhhhh”.. and the Product is Peace.
This is going in the ever simpler practice guide, and this is the fundamental structure of the workshop.
I’m with him on the idea that we need to get this into a book pretty soon.
There is still space in the workshop by the way, which is being held near Nanaimo on Vancouver Island.